"Sustainability means a lot of things. The fact is the world continues to get more connected. So if you plan to stick around, a company's environmental and social impact are now things that have to be strategic and not responsive. You have to plan for how you're going to reduce emissions, both C02, reduce impact on air and water. But also you have to address the human systems. How you're going to train and retain health and safety. All of those are impacts today you have to be strategic for." -- Hendrik van Brenk
A New Year of Sustainability
Hendrik van Brenk, Chief Environmental, Health and Safety (EHS) Officer, Skanska USA Inc.+
Van Brenk, a 25-year health and safety veteran, oversees all of the U.S. EHS professionals, as well as serve as the EHS liaison to Skanska AB. In this role, he develops strategies to strengthen Skanska's leading role in establishing an injury-free workplace and supporting sustainable construction practices – and then sharing these best practices globally.
Van Brenk joined Skanska AB in 2006 and moved to Skanska USA Building Inc. in 2007 as the Senior Vice President, EHS. Prior to becoming a member of the Skanska team, van Brenk served as a health and safety consultant, conducting a review of Skanska's safety systems and processes as well as administering pilot safety studies for the Skanska Sweden, Poland, Czech and Koch units.
Van Brenk is a Certified Safety Professional (CSP) as well as a member of the American Society of Safety Engineers (ASSE) at a national level. He is also a LEED AP. Internally, van Brenk is a member of Skanska's National Green Council and chairs the Safety Performance Network, which formulates global safety policies and strategies.
Skanska is one of the world's leading project development and construction groups with expertise in commercial and residential projects, design-build and public-private partnerships. In the United States, Skanska's four businesses include: Skanska USA Building, Skanska USA Civil, Skanska Infrastructure Development and Skanska Commercial Development.
The Skanska Group currently has 56,000 employees worldwide, more than 8,000 of whom work in the United States.
At any one time we have approximately 1,000 projects taking place in almost all of the 50 states, Washington, D.C., and Puerto Rico. Our U.S. headquarters are in Whitestone, New York.
The combined sales of our U.S. business units in 2008 totaled more than USD 6.3 billion. Approximately 75 percent of our business in the U.S. comes from repeat customers.
We were the first U.S. construction firm to have all of our operations uphold the ISO 14001 Environmental Management System (EMS) Standard - which immediately earns us one LEED credit on all our projects. We are also consistantly ranked as one of the top Green Builder's in the U.S. by Engineering News-Record.
